The best music in New Orleans has never been on Bourbon Street. It’s on Oak Street, on Napoleon Avenue, on Frenchmen Street, in the neighborhoods where the musicians actually live. These four venues are the reason serious music travelers leave the Quarter entirely.
The Maple Leaf Bar
The bar that opened on February 24, 1974, was originally called the Maple Leaf Rag Time Bar and Chess Club, after Scott Joplin’s ragtime composition, and was intended as a quiet intellectual gathering space where people could play chess, read, drink, and occasionally hear some local jazz. That vision lasted about two years. By 1976, the music had taken over completely, and the Leaf has had live performances seven nights a week ever since, making it one of the longest continuously operating live music venues in New Orleans.
James Booker played every Monday evening there from 1978 until his death in 1983. The Rebirth Brass Band has held the Tuesday night slot for so long that it has become a standing institution, the kind of weekly gig that regulars plan their week around. Grammy Lifetime Achievement winner George Porter Jr. of the Meters holds Monday nights now. The physical space is what you’d expect: pressed-tin ceilings, a narrow stage with a bare bulb or two, a packed dance floor, a back courtyard, no pretension whatsoever. The Sunday afternoon poetry series in the courtyard, running continuously since the late 1970s, is the longest-running poetry reading in North America. The Krewe of Oak begins and ends its Mardi Gras parade here.
The Maple Leaf Bar is at 8316 Oak Street in Carrollton, at the bend in the river where the streetcar turns. Open nightly. No dress code. No attitude.
Tipitina’s
Fourteen local music fans pooled roughly $14,000 in late 1976 to take over a former gambling house, gymnasium, and brothel at the corner of Napoleon Avenue and Tchoupitoulas Street. Their specific goal was to give Professor Longhair, the R&B piano genius known as Fess, a room to play in regularly. His career had largely stalled, his influence on New Orleans music was enormous and poorly compensated, and these people wanted to fix that. They named the club after his 1953 song “Tipitina” and opened on January 14, 1977. Longhair performed there until his death in 1980. His bust stands just inside the entrance. His face watches over the stage from a mural above it…